Insulating and protecting glove.



F. S. HOLDEN.

INSULATING AND PROTECTING GLOVE.

APPLICATION FILED FEB. 12' 1917-- Patented Feb. 11,1919.

FBANKUS S. HOLDEN, F OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA.

INSULATING AND PROTECTING GLOVE.

Specification of Letters Patent. I Patented Feb. 11, 1919.

Application filed February 12, 1917. Serial No. 148,180.

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, FRANKUS S. HOLDEN,

' a citizen of the United States, residing at Oakland, in the county of Alameda and State of California, have invented new and useful Improvements in Insulating and Protecting Gloves, of which the following is a specification.

The present invention relates to improvements in gloves which are used for insulating the hands from high Volta e electric cur-- rents or for protecting them rom the acids of batteries or in any other occupation in which the hands have to be protected while being used for the purpose of grasping and manipulating tools or other ob ects. v

Such ggoves are made of rubber, or of a rubber-1i e composition, or of rubber cloth. But they have heretofore been made with the back and front approximately hat or straight. Now, in grasping an object with the hand, or manipulating it with the fingers, the fingers are always curved inwardly, more or less, accordingto the size of the object and the manner in which it is being manipulated. A glove of rubber, or of rubber composition, or the like, which is substantially flat both at back andfront, offers great resistance to the bending of the fingers, since such bending causes the outer portion of the glove to be stretched and 'the inner portion to be bunched up betweeii each bend of the fingers. This resistance is not so noticeable when the gloves are made of very thin rubber, but is a serious hindrance to the performance of work when they are formed of thick rubber, such as is necessary to insulate the hand against high voltage currents or to protect it from the action of acids. The rubber has to be of considerable thickness to do this. and to withstand a reasonable amount of wear; for, y

if even a minute puncture is made therein, the glove is rendered useless as an insulating rotector in wet weather; Now, the stretchmg of this thick rubber on the outer side and its wrinkling on the inner side offer so great a resistance to the bending of the fingers, that it is only by the greatest exertion that the fingers can be sufliciently-bent to grasp an object, and the smaller is the obect to be grasped, such as a wire, the greater is the difficulty of grasping it.

My invention has for its object to remove these objections to the use of insulating and protecting gloves.

In the accompanying drawing, Figure 1 is a perspective view of my improved glove; Fig. .2 is a central longitudinal section thereof.

Referring to the drawing, 1 indicates a left-hand glove constructed in accordance with my' invention, the right-hand glove being, of course, constructed in the same way.

It is made of rubber or any other material suchas is now used for insulating and protecting gloves, but differs therefrom only in form. Instead of molding or forming the glove with fingers extending straight out from the hand portion, so that its front and rear-sides are approximately fiat and parallel with each other, it is molded or normally shaped in a concave-convex form, that is, in the form that would cover, without extension or compression, the hand when partly bent to grasp or manipulate an object. In this form, while the glove offers some resistance to the hand when being straightened out from the grasping position, it is rarely that a worker using one of these gloves finds it is necessary to straighten out his hand, and the slight disadvantage arising in this way from this form of the glove is far more than compensated for by the great advantage arising from the fact that the glove is already normally bent for the greater part of the full extent to which it would be required to be completely bent to graspan object. Thus, on closing the hand, so gloved, around such an object, as a wire, very little resistance is encountered, either by the stretching of the outer side of the glove or ing so. Moreover, the life of the glove is increased by reason of the fact that the inner surface of the glove is now comparatively smooth, instead of being wrinkled by the 5 compression of its inner portion.

I claim: I 7

A rubber glove, the material v gers. of which is normally shaped throughout to fit a hand when bent in position to grasp'or manipulate an object, without materially stretching the glove at the back of the fingers and compressing the glove at the inside of the fins. HOLDEN. 

